I was reading COOP’s blog this morning and totally dug his hyooge post about America staying classy and Evel Knievel — though I know it was only a thinly veiled excuse for him to post this photo — and it made me think of the last time I saw a video with Knievel; really just a few weeks ago. Being a moto girl (whose bike needs a tuneup, heh) I love to watch motorcycle videos. I rented an old Baja 1000 video and there was a short Knievel interview in it, a mention of daredevils and some awesome video of a few female daredevils. Knievel dismissively derided daredevil motorcycle women, and the whole topic of female riders was dropped as fast as you can say “slipped gear”. That’s my memory of the video; shouting “oh fucking come on!” at Knievel onscreen and left with an urge to buy a dirt bike.
But the funny thing is — most of us have heard of Knievel, right? But what about Debbie Lawler, Janet Lee (aka Janet Ward), Teri Kezar, Rene Hart, Linda Buckley and Fiona Beale?
(Photo: Debbie Evans)
Information about these women is scarce, which is a testament to attitudes like Knievel’s. Which is funny because for a while, he co-orchestrated stunts with Debbie Lawler, a former high fashion model who became known as “The Flying Angel” for her jumps and airborne stunts. (He also got busted for soliciting an undercover female officer, but that’s a whole other kind of stunt *insert awful canyon jumping joke here*.)
Female daredevils come in all forms, but female motorcycle daredevils are worthy of worship, and at the very least deserve a grand documentary. Hopefully, when a good historical record of these women emerges, it will include all of the unhinged pathos and lust that the combination of women and machines holds for our culture — like us women who work at SRL (many are speedbike racers, btw), we totally get that taking machines out of context and liberating them from their cogs-and-gears industrial applications frees machinery into becoming unsettling conduits for a strange sort of reckless sexual destruction. These women were evidently pretty threatening, so this female daredevil representation of machine, mayhem, power and lust is an accurate one, and a powerful image. That’s why I’ll always think, “the more pink leather racing outfits, the better.” That’s also part of why us SRL women always wear red lipstick during shows. Such a history should be rounded off with modern motard mistresses, like Philippina Jumpin’ Jamie Pamintuan, Debbie Evans (she did all the Ducati riding in The Matrix) and Heidi Henry, who successfully jumped 87 feet over a canyon in 2001.
So I guess I’m not a big fan of Evel. But I am a big, BIG fan of the Harvey Birdman parody of Evel, Devlin. Kid: “I’m Devlin!” Other kid: “Who the hell is that?” Behold:
I am in deep, deep love with this cartoon series, most especially the character Phil Ken Sebbin who has more fetishes than can be listed on one blog (Sebbin is voiced by Stephen Colbert).
Update: Tiny Nibbles regular Phillip from cool blog this pedro thing tells me, “I’m sure I won’t be the only one to tell you this, but Devlin wasn’t a creation of Harvey Birdman, it was the name of a Hanna-Barbera series from 1974. It was about an Evel Knievel clone named Ernie Devlin and his daredevil family (“The Devilin’ Devlins”). They probably solved mysteries or some such, I don’t really know. Now you know as much as I do about it…”
